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• Water isn’t wet, water wets thingslemmy.world ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨aneurysmposting@sopuli.xyz⁩ | ⁨9⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is science better than the alternative? (And what is that alternative, exactly?)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I suppose there’s authority, consensus and tradition too

  Those aren’t sources of knowledge. They can be a proxy for knowledge obtained through the scientific method. Crucially, you can fact-check them yourself, using the scientific method.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is science better than the alternative? (And what is that alternative, exactly?)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  How did that authoritative source get their knowledge? If it wasn’t through the scientific method, then it’s not knowledge. So you can proxy your knowledge through someone else you trust that did the legwork of going through the scientific process, but that’s not another way of obtaining knowledge, it’s just the scientific process with extra steps.

  Personal experience can also result in knowledge, through the use of the scientific method. You can drop an apple and see that it falls. That’s the observation part of the scientific method. You can go further and try to figure out why that happens, by using the scientific method yourself based on your personal observations of the apple.

  There really isn’t another way. It’s the scientific method all the way down.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is science better than the alternative? (And what is that alternative, exactly?)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  So science is something we use for getting us knowledge about the universe?

  We could call it a tool then. Right?

  Yes

  And it’s better because it delivers higher quality knowledge?

  It’s not “better” than other options, and it doesn’t deliver “higher quality” knowledge. It is the only way of obtaining knowledge about our universe. There’s no other option that it’s “better than”, because the other options don’t result in “lower quality” knowledge. They don’t provide any knowledge at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is science better than the alternative? (And what is that alternative, exactly?)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Science doesn’t “do” anything. It’s not an entity. People use the scientific method to investigate how the universe works. There aren’t really any alternatives.

  Say you came across someone claiming that their tonic cured cancer. Why should you trust them? Well, there’s no other option than see if it works (or see if someone else you trust has already done so, preferably with a peer-reviewed, double-blind study and all that). Now you’re using the scientific method.

  I mean, I guess you’ve got other options. You can blindly trust them. You can pray to the deity of your choice. You can cast snake bones and interpret how they land. None of these provide actual knowledge though. They’re all just guesses until you try it out, at which point you’re again using the scientific method. That’s why there’s no alternative. If you disagree that those options are just guesses, then prove it. Guess what? You’ll be proving it with the scientific method.

  It’s like “alternative medicine”. There’s no such thing. If something works, it’s medicine. If it doesn’t, it’s not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Disney to Crack Down on Password-Sharing Too⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  My SO just set up a new account because of Netflix’s new policies. Like it or not, it’s working out well for Netflix

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most mindblowing fact in mathematics?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In that image, you could color yellow into purple since it’s not touching purple. Then, you could color the red inner piece to yellow, and have no red in the inner pieces.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most mindblowing fact in mathematics?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Not so much a fact, but I’ve always liked the prime spirals: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral